I'm giving up acting. . . . I'm 66 and there are a number of celebrations I've got to get down on paper, and acting doesn't allow me to do that. It was a hell of a drug, performance. It's a great thrill, especially for a storyteller. But it can go. Directing can go. Writing can't go. And in terms of what lies ahead, I want to have a burning focus - almost like smoke coming up from the paper as I write.

Creativity is very selfish. Scandalously so, in fact.

Love is the only energy I’ve ever used as a writer. I’ve never written out of anger, although anger has informed love.

My essential identity is that of a writer.

There is a desperate tendency to try to legislate artists, to try to lay down rules for their obligations to society. Just leave artists alone. If you are a true artist, you will have a very finely tuned moral mechanism.

Every boy needs a role model that he can be proud of and talk about to the other kids in the playground.

Life is just a plain bloody mess, that's all. And people are fools.